James Lavoie’s artistic evolution
James Lavoie’s basement studio is like a portal into his mind, one where glass transforms from rigid and cool to something that fuses and bends into elegant, geometric forms. Lavoie’s love for clean lines and minimalist shapes permeates his work, and while he doesn’t dabble in the overly complex, his pieces emanate a quiet sophistication that comes from years of experience.
His journey into glassmaking wasn’t a straight line, but rather a winding path through different mediums. “I wasn’t really good at drawing,” Lavoie admits, “but I always loved art class.” Pottery first captured his attention while living in Red Deer, but a chance encounter with a friend’s stained glass tools in the 1970s flipped a switch. “I picked them up and I was hooked,” he says. Lavoie dove into stained glass, a medium that gave him his foundational understanding of design, proportion and working with light. “It’s kind of a cliché, but stained glass really is like painting with light.”
Eventually, stained glass led him to kiln-formed glass, where he’s now made his mark. Kiln glass, or “warm glass,” allowed him to merge the precision he learned from stained glass with a more spontaneous approach. Lavoie’s pieces are known for their balance of order and whimsy—a product of his love for geometric shapes and his deep respect for the material’s limitations. “I’ve always had this innate desire to keep things simple,” he explains. “There’s a real elegance in simplicity.”
His recent work features the same attention to clean lines, but he’s been playing more with texture and depth. He speaks excitedly about one of his favourite recent pieces, a boat-shaped design made from strips of blue-green and almond-coloured glass. The two colours reacted during firing, creating a rusty halo effect between them. It’s a small detail, but it’s exactly these kinds of surprises that fuel his creative process. “I love when things like that happen,” he says. “It’s what keeps me experimenting.”
Despite his laid-back demeanour, Lavoie is meticulous, particularly when it comes to the technical challenges of glassworking. From thermal shock to cold-working (the post-firing process of shaping and smoothing), glass demands precision and patience. “You’ve got to have the right tools,” he says, explaining how glass, especially when thick, can become difficult to cut. And while these technicalities might intimidate some, Lavoie embraces them as part of the craft.
One thing he doesn’t get caught up in is holding onto his pieces. While many artists struggle with parting with their work, Lavoie takes a more pragmatic approach. “I’d rather share it,” he says. “I can always make another one.” It’s a sentiment that reflects his openness to both his craft and the world around him.
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